Today, October 22, 2012, is my 70th birthday.I haven’t retired from NASA. My career here, Johnson Space Center, Houston,
Texas, has spanned nearly a half century (47+ years). One of my jobs is serving
as a technical contract monitor.So
rather than celebrating the day in the Caribbean, I sat in a two hour contracts
course on “avoiding fraud and corruption.”The Teague Auditorium was my
celebratory venue along with several hundred NASA contracting colleagues.

Pausing a moment in the Teague Lobby
before returning to my office, I was drawn to the History of Johnson Space
Centerexhibit of past issues of the
ROUNDUP employee newspaper.Alone in
the lobby, I experienceda strange meandering
stream of thoughts flowing into my mind.They were almost audible voices coincident with each picture I studied.Having my Iphone, I captured the photos
below.Beneath each, I’ve recorded those
telepathic-like whispers which accompanied each.

What an exciting day for the Gus Grissom
family!And Gus’s star would rise
brightly as he became America’s second man in space aboard Liberty Bell 7.But, then, how very sad for Mrs. Grissom and
son, Mark, that January 27th of 1967 when Gus perished.Who among all those smiling in this photo
would have guessed what the future held for them, or, for that matter, any of
us.Gus, rest in peace.

1979 (January – July)

I looked up, above Gus’s picture.It was the mural painted by space artist Bob
McCall in 1979 (Jan.-July).I remembered
watching Bob paint the scene, even talking to him while he worked.

Artist Bob
McCall painting Johnson Space Center Mural, 1979.

But I had never noticed which astronauts
he had selected to paint among the four pictured above.Obviously, the likeness of one was Gus
Grissom, .My eyes are not so keen, at
70 years, so after squinting I recognizedthe suit’s name tag. It confirmed
the face as “Grissom’s.”And the voice
said, I did that to remember Gus’s
sacrifice.

“But who was behind Gus?”I wondered.The astronaut’s façade didn’t register.After a half minute more of squinting, I finally made out the letters,
“Shepard.”My thought was, “Yes,
Shepard was a predictable choice as first American in space, but why was not
John Glenn chosen as second in line instead of Gus?”“Because
of Gus’s sacrifice,”was the answer
which spoke to me quietly.

Leading the four-naut inline file of
McCall’s spacemen was John Young.Again,
I wondered, “Why Young? Perhaps, because he commanded the first shuttle
flight?But did John not fly that first Shuttle maiden flight
until 1981 and McCall did this in 1979..Had Young already been designated as such in 1979?Maybe that was the case and why he was
painted as the one to represent the spaceshuttle program.Well, that
program has just concluded forevermore 43 years after Bob’s brush affixed
John’s likeness above me.

And who was the faceless astronaut
behind Young?What did McCall intend to
say?The voice spoke, “He is every American astronaut who ever wore
a NASA space suit from the beginning until the end of time.

And I looked to the left at the scene below.Of course, it is the historic Building 30
Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) that Bob McCall crafted three decades ago.

Obviously, I recognized Dr. Gilruth,
Chris Kraft, George Abby, and Deke Slayton.And to George's left was a profile
of Glynn Lunney who in my mind was the most handsome of the Apollo chief flight controllers.
There were other “lesser lights”who I had worked with whose faces appeared familiar as well.The crowd to the far left must have been akin
to what Scripture calls, “the great cloud of witnesses” who not only observed
but participated in those missions as unseen but essential contributors to
their success.“Funny,” I thought, that
Gene Kranz was not included while other much less notables were.Was that because, Chris Kraft was sort of the
“place-holder” for the flight controllers?“Probably so,” I thought.Likewise, Deke Slayton would be the icon for the astronauts, the
capcom’s so essential to each mission.

Though thelobby was mostly empty of floor displays,all its walls as well as the side corridor
walls had posted pictures, paintings,
plaques, display cases, and medals displayed.Many awards from foreign nations and dignitaries were included.None of these has ever been of much interest
for me.So I ignored most of them.But among them I foundthe above display, special to me because I
was included among those receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a
member of the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team in April of 1970.I’d seen it before in what I hope is not to be
its final resting place.It deserves
better.

For the 40th Anniversary of
the Apollo 13 rescue I sought to resurrect the wonder of that heroic rescue
with an online Internet series of articles, “13
Things That Saved Apollo 13.”(Click
the link for the articles on UNIVERSE TODAYby Nancy Atkinson) But to the credit of those who sentenced our medal to
reside among those of awards from Russia, the Kings, Queens, and diplomats of
the past, Apollo 13 was given an honored place in the lobby, even exceeding
Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Apollo 13 was honored on the opposite
lobby wall by a thirty foot mural of phases of the mission. Additionally, there
were pictures of Apollo 13 mission control displayed beside the
mission-mural.One called Apollo 13
“NASA’s Finest Hour”(Actually, it was
NASA’s finest 87 hours which ensued after the explosion of the mother ship in
April of 1970.)One picture was
especially meaningful. My Iphone captured it below.

What made the above “kludge” work was
the duct tape wrapped around that cubicle canister. Had it not been stowed
aboard Apollo 13, the outcome might have been fatal.Now, those pictured had nothing to do with
coming up with the solution they are examining.But, perhaps, the picture explains Bob McCall’s painting.Notice who is included above: Deke Slayton,
Chris Kraft and Dr. Gilruth, and likewise are they in McCall’s mural.If the images of Gilruth and Kraft are
cropped and mirrored, they appear in McCall’s painting in almost the same
profiles and orientations.The inner
voice whispered,“Yes, the April 1970 picture served, in part,as the mural’s genesis.”

Deke Slayton, Dr. Gilruth, Chris Kraft

Butmore importantly was the story of the duct
tape’s availability.This was an account
that I’d discovered just three days before. Only providence can be credited for
the revelation.A neighbor living several houses down the
street had been my boss in the 1980s.Now
in his 80’s, he had retired from NASA years ago.But each morning as I dressed for work, I’d
see him walk his dog past my home before I left for the office.Occasionally, I’d encounter him as I opened
the garage door to leave for work.Several times, I’d greeted him and paused to talk to him about his
involvement with manned space in the 1960s.George C. Franklin is his name.Years later, George was the chief of my division at JSC, I had little
interaction with him because of my journeyman status.However, because we were neighbors with
similar interest in manned space history we enjoyed reminiscing.

And
so, I’d risen early on Friday, October 19, three days before my birthday,to fertilize the yard.Afterwards I planned toleave for work.Seeing George, I wanted to thank him for
sharing experiences he’d had with the original Mercury astronauts.He had told me of conceiving the idea of
flying the lunar lander, without seats, i.e., standing upright.This had saved the program millions of
dollars and the lander tens of pounds.After
his boss noticed George’s idea was featured in “Popular Mechanics”, he
submitted George’s innovation for an award.For this contribution, my neighbor oncereceived a $25 cost savings award.

Also
I was grateful for information about Apollo 13 and the Gemini program George
shared..I commented, “What you shared
with me, I’ve communicated to groups I’ve spoken to as educational outreach
programs, on and off the job.”

Recently,
Wikipedia, had included an
item George gave me, “that duct tape had been stowed onboard NASA spacecraft
since early in the Gemini Program.”The
mention of the duct tape led George to explain how and why it was included in
the Gemini spacecraft. His explanation had to do with concern about unpacking
experiments, food stuffs, and stowed equipment in the confines of the Gemini
cabin.

In
George’s words: “I told…I think it was (Scott) Carpenter, that any time you
come home from the grocery store with two bags of groceries, you have four bags
of trash to dispose of after you unpack everything.”George continued, “They wanted to design and
manufacture some kind of a complicated trash compactor to deal with the residual
trash.Well, I said, “Don’t do that
just use duct tape to wrap everything up into a compact disposable
package.Plain things solve a problem
best.”Then George said, “I even wrote
a memo advocating this solution.Unfortunately, who knows where it can be found now.But anyway, I won, and duct tape was put
onboard Gemini and every spacecraft since.

Now,
I thought, “Yes, the folks who came up with the above Apollo 13 filter for
Slayton,Kraft and company to approve
were heroes.Yet, without George, they
would not have had that duct tape to solve the problem.”So I’ve wanted to tell the story fully.In fact, I’ve tried to do that for students
using a YouTube
video and song I’ve
written.Below is a picture from the
video:

Discovering
George’s contribution to the whole story really excited me about adding it to
future lessons about Apollo 13.

Sharing on YouTube the Apollo 13 Square Filter/Round
Hole Solultion

“George,”
I said, “Sometime, I’d like to come over and visit with you about this kind of
thing.”But I thought about it.Maybe it would be better just to let it
happen whenever George was walking his dog, and I happened to be leaving for
work?

Months
before, in appreciation for George sharing his anecdotes, I printed up his NASA
oral history, binding it into a coffee table book for him to share with friends
and family.But I hadn’t really read
what he’d recorded in his oral history interview.So later that day, I opened the .pdf file and searched for the
word, “duct tape.” What I read revealed
just how essential George was to
building that configuration that made the square filter work in the round
barrel using duct tape.Actually, George
was, arguably, most responsible for the solution though he was never credited
for it.

As
the Apollo Display and Control project engineer in the mid 1960s, I was aware
of a unique astronaut supportgroup.They were constructing a mock up of the crew
quarters for the lunar lander and the Apollo mother ship Command Module.Because I was responsible for testing
spacecraft displays,meters, gauges, and
switchesI would receive calls and
memos from the Flight Crew Support Division requesting transfer of non-flight
test articles for use in mock-ups.These
items were an inexpensive way of building sort of an astronaut full size kind
of “spaceship” doll house. The facility could validate ergonomic issues about the crew
cabin.After switches and gauges were
stress tested, they had no operational value.They might end up at a government auction along with discarded military
surplus items.What I didn’t know was that
the concept and execution of the aerospace astronaut “playhouse” was largely George’s
idea.Reading his oral history explained
his involvement in detail.Here it
is.I won’t have to interview George in
the company of his dog for this.I’ll be
at work on time.

We did all the cabin
integration then for the lunar module. It turned out very successful. I was
going to get in, when I got into the mockups, to talk about Apollo 13, but let
me talk about Apollo 13. We always had big mockups for Gemini and Mercury, and
we got into Apollo, the cost of the mockups furnished by North American
[Aviation, Inc.] and by Grumman were high, and the program office was short of
money and didn't want to really produce those. But they produced some.

We finally got them to produce
the basics for us down in Houston, and then the mockup group that I had working
for me at that time was very innovative and very capable. We had our own little
shop, plus we used Tech [Technical] Services [Division]. Tech Services would
come in, and if we furnished them the materials and the money and the design,
they would hammer it together. Jack [A.] Kinzler worked with us very well on
that. He didn't like us having our own shops, but he tolerated us, because we
had some excellent machine shops, but he had the better ones. But anyway, the
mockups were used for training, engineering evaluations, and mission support,
and I guess the best place that that really showed its mettle was in Apollo 13.

I went to see the movie, by the
way, and it was very, very good, very well done. As soon as we got word what
happened, I had pretty close relationship with the environmental control people
that were over in Crew Systems [Division] at that time, and they worked in our
mockups a lot. And I hollered at them and I said, "We got a problem with
those square canisters and those round canisters." I said, "We're
going to have to figure out something quick."

From movie APOLLO 13 – Fitting a Square
Peg Into a Round Hole

And
sure enough, we got a call real quick from the [Mission Control Center],
"Hey, how are you going to figure this out?" Because the lunar module
people said, "We're not going to have enough lithium hydroxide." So I
got the environmental control people together, I got all my storage people
together, and since we put out the storage drawing for everything on the cabin,
we knew where everything was, and before the flight we always stow the mockup
with everything that they had at launch. So I got those guys together, and I
sent them down to the mockup, and I said, "You guys, sit on the floor
there till you figure that out." And the same thing with the command
module, which was right next to it down on the floor. And they went down there,
and they worked and worked, and pretty soon, they hollered back, and they said,
"We got it." And I said, "Take it on over there [to Mission
Control]. I don't even want to bother seeing it. I know you did it right."
And they'd come up with the cardboard covers from the flight plan and the duct
tape and spare hoses that were in there and put it together, made a
square-peg-in-a-round-hole kind of an operation. They wrote up procedures and
sent it up. I don't think that took them more than six, seven hours to come up
with that, including the procedures, because I said, "Whatever you come
up, make sure you have the procedures when you go over to mission
control." And they went over there and they showed Deke Slayton and the
mission control people, and [Eugene F.] Kranz said, "Send it up." So
we were very happy, you know, that that solved that problem. We couldn't solve
all the problems. We'd solved some of the others of wires back and forth for
power and storage of things and what have you. But that was where the mockups really
came into being. They came into use other times, too.